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The ecliptic
in figure 1 shows the constellation Aquarius rising in
the east at the time my client was born. She does not have any
planets travelling through the constellation the Water Bearer,
as her natal Mars in the zodiac sign of Aquarius (figure
2) is actually amongst the stars of Capricorn. However,
circling Aquarius are (clockwise from a northern hemisphere
orientation) the constellations Pegasus, the winged horse,
Cygnus, the swan, and Aquila, the eagle (see figure 3).
To the south of the ecliptic there is Capricornius, the
sea-goat, Pisces Austrinus, the Southern Fish who drinks from
the urn of Aquarius, Cetus the Whale, and Pisces, the Fishes
(see figure 4).
This is a part of the sky that
is filled with creatures of the air (birds and horses with
wings) north of the ecliptic and water (a sea-goat,
fishes, an urn of water) and a whale, south of the
ecliptic. |
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Figure
2 - Client born: 30 March 1943, Chicago, Illinois at 4:57
am CST - natal sky map in figure
1. |
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Once can
ask whether one of these constellations takes visual presence over
the others. For my client born at sunrise, the dominant sky picture
was Pegasus and Equuleus hanging low to the horizon (see figure
1). If she had been born in London, UK, or even Perth, Western
Australia, not only would the ecliptic be inclined at a different
angle but the orientation of the sky pictures would have been
greatly altered and the horses may not have figured in the story.
However, it was so for my client.
The Story of
Pegasus
From 12,000 BCE
to up to only a hundred or so years ago horses were a core component
in the lives of humans and considered sacred. Brady [1] also notes
how horses were a part of the transition culture that led from the
hunter-gather (Palaeolithic) to the cultivating Neolithic villages.
So Pegasus and Equuleus, the horses in the sky, embody the
concept of the sacred horse. Visually in the sky Pegasus
materializes from the neck of Andromeda, and this description is
echoed by the Greeks in the story of Medusa. Medusa is a beautiful
woman seduced by the god Poseidon and they spend a night of passion
in the temple of Athena. In so doing Medusa becomes pregnant but
Athena's rage curses her to turn men to stone. So she hides herself
away, caught in a stuck state. In the myth she is only released from
this stuck state when she is slain by Perseus. Upon her death
Pegasus, the child of the union with Poseidon, is then "born" by
emerging from her neck.
This mythology merged with the
visuals of the
square of Pegasus associated by ancient people with the notion of
the four compass points and the division of the year into four
sections via the movement of the Sun on its journey (the two
equinoxes and the two solstices), so the great magical square of
Pegasus, the sacred horse, along with its sense of action and speed
also became associated with knowledge and learning. Thus we
could say that in this image there is the theme of animal instinct
twinned with intellect, the sacred given a framework by number but
only after a release from a stuck state.
What
might this mean for my client and anyone who has Pegasus
predominant? To have the constellation
Aquarius rising in the east at the time of my client’s birth with
Pegasus sitting above the horizon may mean that, like the myth of
Medusa, something in her life has to change so that Pegasus can be
released. In so doing, she is then showered with the blessings and
abundance of The Water Bearer, the constellation
Aquarius.
Here is my
client’s story
In 2004 when my
client was sixty years of age, she was test riding a horse as a
prelude to buying him. My client had been a horse-lover for
many years and the man who owned him was a trusted colleague and a
skilled horseman with fifty years experience. He took my client out
on the trails of a remote mesa in Santa Fe, New
Mexico. However, on returning from the ride and within sight of
his small ranch, the horse bolted. My client was thrown from her
seat, landed on her left buttock and shattered the left side of her
pelvis.
The following day
when she was prostrate in hospital on a morphine drip and in
complete shock, the man confessed to my client that this horse had
had a number of bolting experiences with him prior to this event, as
well as with his wrangler and another client of his, a woman, who
had also been thrown.
My client writes:
Three medical professionals
have since told me that I should have died on the mesa that
afternoon from traumatic shock, since the rescue squad could not
get to me for about two hours. That began a dreadful odyssey
through incompetent medical care for the next several months. I
actually had to do an online search to find an expert in pelvic
trauma and was successful at doing so. I had extreme
orthopaedic surgery to repair the broken bones and now have twelve
screws and probably a foot of bicycle chain screwed in to hold the
bones together so that they would knit. The surgery was
successful. The surgeons were elegant and magnificent expressions
of Martian energies and skills, but I am still recovering from it,
as the surgery itself is extremely traumatic. I shall
probably be ‘rehabbing’ for the rest of my life. I have been
an active person lifelong, just returning to the world of the
horse clan after a forty year hiatus, a passionate gardener
for thirty years, and a devotee of wilderness hiking and
camping. Sadly I ‘lost’ my body with this accident, and while
I am determinedly working at coming back and absolutely to get
back in the saddle, my body will never be the same. I am in
a measure of pain, albeit manageable, most of the time and am
still quite limited in my stamina and strength. We have 12.5 acres
and a barn for our six horses. In spite of the physical
challenges, I have returned to gardening and am learning the
intricacies of growing things in the high desert (we are at 7,000
feet on the western edge of the Rockies). Thanks to the gods
for the horses, as they have been instrumental in my
healing. They are amazing allies.
This extreme
experience of my client being ‘released' from her horse is in an
uncanny reversal of Pegasus being released from the neck of
Andromeda or Medusa, and as Medusa was killed, so it resulted in the
‘death’ of my client’s body as she knew it previously. Yet this
death received the benediction and blessings of The Water Bearer,
experienced as a fount of energy within her that was determined and
forceful, focused and spirited, rather than being an incident that
crushed her spirit and her will to walk.
Certainly other people born at this
latitude will also have the same sky picture and thus may have
experienced a traumatic transition from a stuck state when Pegasus
is born which we are calling an equus naissance. Indeed it
would be interesting to hear from readers who have also encountered
this style of traumatic transition associated with Pegasus. These
will, of course, be in ways that are specific and unique to your sky
narrative, for what personalizes each person’s story is its
orientation at the moment of birth - rising, setting or maybe
culminating above your head.
A more public example...
Christopher Reeve
Actor,
writer, director, lobbyist Christopher Reeve, born 25th September
1952, 3:30 am New York NY, has The Water Bearer on his Descendant
and Pegasus parallel to the ecliptic, about to race down into the
other world below the horizon, see figure 5.
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Figure 5 - Christopher Reeve,
natal sky map showing the western horizon at the time of his
birth - Pegasus and Equuleus are on the horizon.
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Reeve
made his first appearance at the Williamstown Theatre festival at
the age of fifteen. After graduating from Cornell University in
1974, Reeve pursued his dream of acting, studying at Juilliard under
the legendary John Houseman. He made his Broadway debut opposite
Katharine Hepburn in “A Matter of Gravity” in 1976 and then
went on to distinguish himself in a variety of stage, screen and
television roles before taking on the role of Superman.
Reeve
took up horse riding in 1985 after learning to ride for the film
Anna Karenina. He trained at Martha's Vineyard and by 1989 he
began eventing. As with every other sport and activity in which he
participated (sailing, scuba diving, skiing, aviation, windsurfing,
cycling, gliding, parasailing, mountain climbing, baseball, tennis),
he took horse riding seriously and was intensely competitive with
it. On May 27, 1995, at the Commonwealth Dressage and Combined
Training Association finals at the Commonwealth Park equestrian
centre in Culpeper, Virginia, his horse started the jump over the
third fence, and then suddenly stopped. Reeve held on and the
bridle, the bit, and the reins were pulled off the horse and tied
his hands together. He landed headfirst on the other side of the
fence. His helmet prevented any brain damage but the impact of his
215 pound (98 kg) body hitting the ground shattered his first and
second vertebrae. Reeve had not been breathing for three minutes
before paramedics arrived. He was taken to the local hospital, and
then flown by helicopter to the University of Virginia Medical
Centre.[3]
The
accident turned his life around. Using his public status, Reeve gave
a human face to spinal cord injury. He
formed the Christopher Reeve Foundation (CRF), a
national, nonprofit organization, to support research to develop
effective treatments and a cure for paralysis caused by spinal cord
injury and other central nervous system disorders and lobbied
endlessly in a spectrum of ways to help improve the quality of life
for people with disabilities, all the time continuing to act and
direct film and write books. Christopher Reeve died October
10, 2004 of
heart failure. He was fifty-two years old.
It
would seem that Christopher Reeve, like my client, also experienced
an equus naissance, the traumatic birth of a new life from a
stuck state. Is this part of the role of Pegasus and Equuleus, the
horses in the sky?
---------------------------
1.Brady, Bernadette (1998).
Brady’s Book of fixed Stars, York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc.,
p.177.
2.http://www.christopherreeve.org/site/c.geIMLPOpGjF/b.1046769/k.932D/Christopher_Reeve_Biography.htm
- accessed 15th July 2008.
3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Reeve#Injury - accessed
15th July 2008. |
